Thursday, February 2, 2012

It's been awhile since anybody has posted on this site, what with life responsibilities and everything. Sorry to any readers who were crushed by this news.

Anyway, I have just completed my Zelda Timeline paper that I have been working on for about a month, after having completed all of the Zelda titles in the series, playing each during one long month marathon. I figured this would be the perfect place to publish my paper, in PDF format. I might work on an eBook format, but we'll see.

Please feel free to download a copy for yourself, of this 56 page, 20 chapter masterpiece detailing the entire Zelda Timeline. You can download it simply by clicking THIS LINK.

If you have any comments or suggestions, you can leave a comment here or email me at masterzpotts[at]gmail.com

@Ego: The fact that it's not made and acknowledged by Nintendo doesn't mean these aren't games in the series. Also if you can come up with a whole book about the timeline, why don't bother about the CD-i games. They are just as important.

Maybe I should go mention this in prizes.org and set a huge reward for this. I'd love to see "complete" timelines coming in.

@Pettan: ...it DOES mean that. Nintendo is in charge of their own series' canon. If the CD-i games are non-canonical, they do not exist within a fiction's world, and as such wouldn't be included on a timeline, since they've been declared to have not happened.

Also, the myriad "Eras" seem to be the ones dictated originally in the official timeline from Hyrule Historia. Even that official timeline didn't include the CD-i games while listing every other game, easily implying that Nintendo is erasing the CD-i games from the timeline entirely.

I´m working on a fan story in the Zelda Universe for 10 years (I started when Wind Waker was released). I know is a long long time to make a story, but I´m doing that in my spare time, and changes a lot of things year about year.

Your timeline analysis gives me all the things I needed to put an end to all the story, and make better some parts. My story is my theory of how the Zelda Universe works. Is a little bit different of a timeline, and a bit more complicated. But this work of yours, I can explain it better.

Great work man. Great, great work. Thanks for your time doing it. A Lot.

I would have loved to have played the CD-i games, but I don't have that console. I reckon I could have played them on the PC somehow, but yeeaaaaaaah. And I'm on the side where I don't think those games are canon. Nintendo didn't make them, so they aren't official. I'm sure their stories could be placed somewhere semi-logically, but still.

Nintendo said a lot of times that the CD-I games are not canon. But that doesn´t mean that a game not done by Nintendo aren´t canon. The Oracle games was done by Capcom, and the Ocarina remake is a Grezzo production.

The CD-I Zeldas was from a deal beetwen Nintendo and Philips for the seconds develop the Snes CD. Remember also the other Nintendo character games on CD-I. All of them are... well, they exist.

Fantastic! I stumbled upon this today, and I must say that it is amazing! Thanks for your efforts in preparing this essay. In something that is as confusing as the Zelda timeline, I think that this will become a resource that people simply point to and say, "It's explained there."

Great Work. It's great to see everything place chronologically, and spelled out so perfectly. Thank you.

I have one suggestion/theory about the alternate timeline (and Link's death in OoT). Since it seems as if only Link (and Zelda) can kill Ganon, then it might make sense that only Ganon can "truly" kill Link.

If Ganon killed Link at the end, then it would make sense that all the towns in ALttP are named after the Sages. Then again, I agree that Nintendo probably just wanted to create a more substantial link between OoT and the games made before OoT , but just couldn't create one, so they crammed it all the pre-OoT into an Alternate timeline.

I like your comment, Unknown, about the town names in AoL. I wanted to mention those in the paper, but it just didn't make sense, looking at the timeline.

If you're unfamiliar, the town names in AoL are almost entirely named after the Sages; Nabooru, Saria, Rauru, etc. So, it would be my theory that after the events of OoT, the sages became famous and were immortalized in the names of these towns. Unfortunately, AoL falls in the Alt Timeline.

It could be though, that Link was defeated by Ganon as an adult, AFTER he had revived the sages. So, then in the backstory to ALttP where the Wise Men sealed Ganondorf, those could have actually been the sages from OoT that Link had awakened.

The only thing that semi points in the opposite direction of that is that all the maidens in ALttP that are descendents of the wise men are human/hylian. So, none of them are Gorons or Kokiri or Zoras. It could easily be though, that Zelda birthed all of these descendents, or that she birthed one, and then that one had a couple kids, and then their kids had kids, easily making 7.

So, technically that could work. Although the story in ALttP says Ganondorf made it into the Sacred Realm, but couldn't get out, so Link would have had to have been killed while he was a child, so the sages wouldn't have been awoken. But still, that doesn't mean those same sages wouldn't have gotten awakened by some other method or by someone else.

So, it's totally possible. I wouldn't agree though that only Ganon can kill Link. Definitely not. There is even a canonical reason to believe that, in that in AoL, Ganon's minions have to kill Link to revive Ganon, which happens when you get the game over screen, which shows Ganon, after he was resurrected because you died. So yeah, Link died and it wasn't because of Ganon himself.

"which is a bit bizarre really as that hasn't happened yet I don't believe, unless there was a Hero in Hylia's time that we don't know about, which is possible. I'll assume that's not the case." There was a hero in Hylia's time. It's in the manga at the end of Hyrule Historia. She gives that Link the master sword and he actually sends up the piece of land with it before he dies. The red Loftwing was also Hylia's during the war which is probably it's significance. Just wanted to throw that in there. ^^ So far this read is amazing tho.

AWESOME. This blew my mind. I've been a Zelda fangirl for 15 years, but I never understood "decline timeline" or "child timeline" until your paper. It was brilliant to read and I really appreciated all your hard work!